His Safe Place

My friend M- recently got new carpet so she was kind enough to cut out a piece of her old carpet that I could use to replace the fraying rug that was in pretty rough shape in my main level bedroom.

Of course to install the "new" carpet I had to remove everything from the room and pull up the old rug. This got the boyz pretty riled up. When M- and her dad arrived with the "new" carpet all three boyz were full of equal parts anxiety and curiosity.

Theo was acting like he's never acted before- completely frightened by it all. He was slinking along, tummy low to the ground. He kept going underneath the kitchen table chairs and wouldn't let me comfort him at all.

Since he's usually so social with guests I was a little bit worried. I think I may have figured out his apprehension though. The main level bedroom is where he was introduced into the house. He spent his entire first week behind closed bedroom door as I followed some information I got from the Internet about introducing a new cat into a household with cats. One of the things that was mentioned was to keep the new cat in a fairly small room- a place that he could always return to if he felt in danger in any way.

Theo since hasn't spent all that much time in that room but it occured to me that I had ripped up his safe place and this was the biggest physical change that has been made since he has moved in.